The world of The Giver gives the first impressions of a Utopia with everything on the surface seemingly perfect. Color isn't a part of their reality. Everyone sees in black and white. This perfection is derived from the fact that everyone is the same. This is a place that's community driven where everyone is expected to volunteer, so flaws such as clumsiness isn't appreciated. No one makes a decision for themselves. Families are chosen for them. When they're allowed children is chosen. Children only maintain their relationships with parents until they're adults. Couples receive children from Birth Mothers whose soul purpose is to have children. Love doesn't exist. It's almost mechanical in the way people behave. Desire and lust are completely unheard of. They're not allowed to have these feelings, so when “stirrings” occur they're immediately given treatment in the form of pills. Pain is taken away so they never have to feel it. They don't have an understanding of death. The Old are “released” when the time arrives. Babies that don't make it to par are “released.” No one has to feel grief, because they're given “treatment” to take it away.
They reach the same mile stones, with everyone receiving a bike when they turn nine which is also when the girls get to shed their ribbons. Jonah is finally of the age where he's given the job that he's going to do as an adult. Except Jonah is skipped over, only to be informed that he's to be the Receiver. Jonah learns that these memories that he's seeing are history, the way life used to be. Jonah is quite literally receiving the knowledge of the world and of the past. The Giver begins with Jonah by showing true happiness: grandparents, snow, sledding. He gets to see what love really is and experiences fun. These happy memories shift when the Giver gives him a memory of a sled crashing which allows Jonah to feel his first leg injury and nausea. He's not allowed anything to take the pain away, because he's supposed to discover the purpose of it. He doesn't understand why bad memories would be kept. The Giver tells him that the memories are wisdom, and explains that once the council thought about extending the number of children for each children. The Giver remembered overpopulation and the starvation it causes, so he advised against the decision.
When Jonah shows up for a lesson, he finds the Giver in pain and asking him for help which leads to Jonah's first memory of war being transmitted. Jonah sees men dying and a soldier he gives water to dies before his eyes. The horror and the pain of this memory overpowers him and he never wants to return. The Giver asks for forgiveness for many reasons. Jonah's world is completely shattered by the amount of pain he experiences through the memory of war. He's fully see mortality, death, and pain. The Giver doesn't want Jonah to end up like the Receiver before. The Giver regrets giving the memory before Jonah was truly ready and he's sincerely sorry for it. Before this Jonah thought his life was perfect, without fear and without pain. Following the memory of war, he can't go backwards. This also sparks a chain of events that leads to Jonah rebelling to protect baby Gabe from being released.
A key feature to Jonas's society is that they have adopted the Sameness. The Sameness has dulled all of their emotions and eliminated the memory of past events as well as the associated feelings of those events. The society feels that this is a good and beneficial thing because they will no longer have to remember and feel emotional pain and hatred. They also don't remember or feel true happiness and joy either, but the absence of awful memories is considered more important.
There is one person that remembers and contains all of the memories of the society. That is the Giver, and he is getting old. He needs to pass the memories onto Jonas. Jonas has been raised with Sameness, and he has never experienced the joy of sledding down a hill or the pain of a sunburn. Consequently, he is not emotionally experienced with or equipped for brutal and harsh memories. The memory of war and soldiers crying out in pain and begging for their mothers and water is a terrible memory for any person; however, it is far beyond anything that Jonas can comprehend. The Giver knows this, and the Giver knows that the memory is going to cause Jonas incredible pain and heartache. The Giver apologizes because he knows that he intentionally has caused Jonas to suffer.
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